


shatter

by e11ipses



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Dark Charles, M/M, POV Charles, POV Second Person, Protective Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e11ipses/pseuds/e11ipses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that you stopped them you had screamed and he had cried and told you it was okay, you were okay, it was an accident.<br/>The second time you laughed. </p><p>An apocalyptic future where Charles reflects on finally going over the edge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shatter

 

Shatter ( _verb):_

1\. break or cause to break suddenly and violently into pieces.   

2\. upset (someone) greatly.

+

 

 

““Do you think I’ve gone round the bend?”

“I’m afraid so. You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

> * * *

 

There is a word no one ever says around you. Labels you. It hides, under tongues and beneath eyelids. Apparent in a second and then gone, washed away, like the ocean or like memories. You toy with it, sometimes, when you kiss him. You try and catch this word before it's spoken in the depth of his throat. You bite away the traces of it on his tongue, his neck. If it does not exist than so do you. He is very careful, all the time. What he says. What he thinks.

 

You have read many books and some of them are about freedom. Probably most of them are, at their core, but you are a scientist. Things are always there or not there for you, possible or impossible, even though you are living proof. You and he are living proof of the colour grey, and the colour red he wraps himself in, and the colour blue of apathy.

 

Apathy: (noun) complacency, I don't care. There was an experiment someone told you about once, or maybe you read it. They put a frog into a pan with cold water and they turned up the heat. Gradually, gradually. It may have even felt pleasant at first. Maybe it was too slow to notice. In any case, the frog didn’t jump out. It occurs to you that neither did you.

 

This it seems can be a metaphor for much of your life and what's left of it. Not just your situation but yourself. This is You, after all, this is Your Fault, louder, YOUR FAULT, and they and he did not realise. He still does not realise, or maybe that's not the word. He is not ignorant but strong, it is willpower. If you live life undecided then he is your counterbalance. He resolves to forget something and he does. He commits and he sticks like some kind of glue. Through thick and thin. Through sickness and health, or something like that. You look at him every day and you think, I'm sorry. Because he committed to you, long ago, when you were something worth a shred. He committed to you.

 

You are of course, his, and he yours, but not by your doing. When it's particularly bad and you wake up screaming out your mouth and out his and you feel the chinks and linings that make him _him_ and you feel your finger on a switch you tell him, go. Get out. Run. Leave me.

This doesn't help at all, of course. You know him as intimately as anyone ever could. This may or may not be a reason why you only ever try this method of persuasion.

 

The thing he doesn't understand and never will is just how damn _awful_ you really are, because for some reason in his mind you're a saint he's tainted or something ridiculous like that. You've pointed it out to him before, before this, even, back when it was always so complicated but so blissfully easy, he's always been nobler than you. He's always admitted to you, for one. _You_ were never _his_ dirty little secret. He never tried to change you. Publicly disown you, humiliate you. Threaten you, for god's sakes. When it finally happened and that last straw fell he was the only one who didn't run screaming. The only one who didn't laugh, or shake their head, and say things like, _shame, thought he was a good one._ He came to you in your disgrace and took you back to his following. His arms were warm and strong and open, like his thoughts, which he didn't hide.

 

 _Where's your helmet?_ you said, voice rising a little hysterically. _Wear it,_ you said, w _ear it! I'll hurt you!_

 _It's okay_ , he said. _I don't need it. I'm fine. I trust you, Charles_ , he said, and you were silent. _I trust you. I trust you._

_I trust you. I trust you._

 

This haunts you more than anything else, anyone else. After an episode where everyone is there and suddenly isn't, this is what you think. All those loud voices and thoughts and hopes and then silence, because you made it so. Silence except for this. Your mantra. Your harness.

 _I trust you,_ and sometimes past tense. _I trusted._

 

Far too many people have done that very thing and paid for it. You have told him as much in the quiet moments against his chest, where you feel his thoughts like the rumbles of speech.

You know, then, that he doesn't care. You know that he wants you to stop caring about it, too.

 _Charles_ , he says, in a careful kind of voice. _I learned something, a long time ago. When I first started crossing them off the list._

The list, you think, not his list, he thinks you wouldn’t want to hear him own it. You project this sentiment at him, feel the mental flinch he makes. _Don't censor yourself for me,_ you tell him, _of all people._

His broad hand is running circles in your hair. His breathing is deep and a practiced kind of slow.

 _Don't let it rule you, Charles,_ is what he says, eventually. _You're better than that._

 

Interesting, the little rises and falls in voice, tone, inflection. Such vastly different meanings from one syllable to the next. Why? All businesslike, ordered. A simple follow up. _Why?_ Stronger, persistent. Annoyed, maybe, disgruntled. WHY? Alarmed, angry, scared, frightened. Sometimes people ask you what it feels like to read thoughts. (Once, upon a time, you can scarcely remember.) They say things like: _how do you know?_ And _what does it sound like?_ And _Do you_ see _it?_ The answer: well. You haven't quite decided. It's not quite a sound but not written down, either. There are different kinds of levels to this sort of thing, too. Base primal reactions like joy, and hate, and fear. These things you feel through second skins. But the complex stuff: it's kind of a mixture. Things are often thought too quickly to be translated into words. Only a kind of _sense_ is constant. Across languages, literacy levels, everything. Like a scent that maybe lingers long after the flowers have died. When he says _don't_ and his voice doesn't crack it's the same sort of thing. You’d give it a name but everything you have seems kind of useless.

His mind is ordered, you put it this way. And then it isn’t, and then it is.

 

You remember that period of your life, yes, but then again, not really. You remember the truth of his intermittency, your rage, your youth, your careless belief in your capability. Bright colours and high waisted jeans, though neither of you were that fashionable. You were preoccupied with other things, then, teaching and scouting for others like you. Distractions, really, although don't tell your younger self that. You didn't hate him and you never did, no. But you hated your love for him. You hated your dependency on his lungs for your air, that sinking feeling when you saw him dressed in those awful magenta robes and all that _confidence._ These things you know the truth of, like you know the truth of events behind an old photograph. Something happened. There was a reason you were all laughing so vividly at the camera. You can't for the life of you place what.

Because if your worst fear was weakness then, let’s face it, you're already here. Gotten it over and done with, like you said to those tiny minds you were somehow allowed to influence. Nothing more to worry about then. You're fine. Free to go.

 

 _It's because you are ashamed,_ he says once, across a chess table in a crowded public park. He is standing, staring, the game finished at a stalemate, and you wonder not for the first time exactly which of you can read minds. _You are ashamed of me._

 _No,_ you say, and then you stop, because you have to. He pauses a moment, waits for you to continue, and when you don't he just looks at you. As though you could have done better. Made an effort. Disappointment, is the word, and nausea settles thin and greasy in your stomach.

 _I am not perfect,_ he says, eyes narrowed, sad. _And neither are you._

 

This is all too late, of course. Too Late, you feel like it should be capitalised, for importance, you know. Louder, maybe. TOO LATE. A warning, a joke. The kind of thing you say as a trick of sorts, _hey, want a high five? TOO LATE._ Or maybe too slow. All fun and games at least until a small thing changes. Now you feel like screaming it in the dead of the night when you wake up and he is curled almost dangerously around you. _TOO LATE!_ Is what you'll say, in your dreams, in the emptiness. _TOO LATE! TOO LATE!_

 

Self-awareness: hmm. You don't have it, or didn't have it, you're not quite sure whether this counts. This kind of limbo. You wouldn't know, because you've always been in denial. The things you used to say. To yourself and others, all of it. He put up with you, all your shit, all this time. He, your rock, your soldier, your home. Steady and calm and constant, all these precious qualities that you used to pretend you had. He had them right from the beginning. He had you right from the beginning, and he knew it, and you knew it too, but you were surprisingly good at pushing things out of your mind. It came naturally.

 

 _You must have a very active mind!_ : A reporter, somewhere fancy. You think, _what a stupid thing to say,_ and then think, _that isn't true._ (It is, but you won't tell.) You answer out loud: _I don't know. I don't know if that's the right way to go about it. Every mind is active, in its own way. Everyone thinks constantly, of something, although of course the subject matter varies._ (Laughter: you are a hit.) _My mind is no more active than anyone else's. It just happens to have a lot of outlets for that activity._ (More laughter, grins.)

 

You think now, he must have seen that, during that time. He must have seen it and just spent some time deciding how to react. You are twin now in your disdain for that younger, innocent man. Those thin veils of self-deprecation, modesty.  He told you once, back before, that you were better than them. Wanted to see your reaction. The night was quiet and you were alone. _Don’t say things like that,_ you finally said.

 

 _Hated?_ he says, when you ask him one day. _No, I never hated you. Charles, really. I mean, we didn't always see eye to eye but- no, for god's sake, I'm not joking, Charles. You_ know _I am. Look at me. Dammit, Charles. Look at me. You know it. I never hated you. I never._

He cups your face in his hands: that isn't really the word. "Cups" seems so passive. He isn't passive. He demands it: your attention. He wrenches it from you with those hard lips and indeterminable eyes and forces you to look, to _see_.  _I never hated you, Charles,_ and his voice isn't cracking, your hands are not shaking. _Believe me. You know._

 

Know- well. You know a few things. You knew even more. It is such a strange concept, when you think about it, knowing. You spend a lot of time in the human brain, you know- and there it is again- how it works. How _knowledge_ works. A feeling of certainty about a subject, is a kind of clinical definition. There's many holes in that, of course. There are things you aren't at all certain about that you know all the same. It's more a truth, is how you think of it, and you've long since stopped caring about the controversy that may entail. A kind of personal truth. You are a telepath, for instance. You know this, in the fabric of your being. But there are other things too. You are adrift, right now, for instance, and he is the only thing anchoring you to the earth.

 

In the quiet moments that lie on the edges of your sleeps you curl together, tighter, and you breathe. It is all very simple, in these moments. No one speaks, and no one needs to.

 

Speaks, of course, meaning more than one thing. A short time after it all happened and he found you such things ceased to be so rigid. He doesn't wear the helmet anymore, and you don't mention it. You bleed into each other now, different shades of the same colour, impossible to discern a divide between the two. You feel the thrum of metal like a second limb. Feel the foreign crunch of leaves underfoot. His arm itches and you unconsciously start to scratch it. It is an incredible feeling, of course. And it scares you, too. It scares the fucking soul out of you.

 

Because he says, _let go, I don't mind, be free. I'm past it now, the hiding, I just want you, and for you to know me._ Because he thinks that this is it, that this is all you can do, that he is safe and everything else were just isolated incidents. He is wrong, so very wrong. Fatally wrong, and you only half-heartedly try to warn him.

 

Checks and balances are important things. If you were far too interested in your image before at least it gave you some sort of leash. Some reason not to do it: think of your reputation! And now you don't even have that. He is your reason not to do it, but it doesn't work, because he trusts you. You know he wouldn't, if you were as open with him as he is with you. If he felt the oppressive otherness of human minds and their loudloudloud thoughts and the hatehostilityragesadnessdespair that you wade your way through and he knew the cleanness, the clarity, and silence you could bring.

 

Imagine a wall lined with rows upon rows upon rows of lights. Flickering, hovering, dancing lights of every colour and so bright they all merge into one kind of murky cream colour that shimmers and you can't keep your eyes open, you can't, so you just flick of the switch.

Darkness, calm and soothing. Final.

 

When he came to you the second time when you had forgotten to feel fine you knew it was time to go, to leave, to vacate. The first time you had screamed with the terrible knowledge of _power_ and he had cried and told you it was okay, you were okay, it was an accident. The second time you laughed. The second time you laughed, and read confused in the crevices of his mind.

 

 _They did this to you, Charles,_ he thinks, but he never thinks, he never intends for you to hear. He thinks that what you are now is their fault, somehow, and you can taste the seedlings of his old thirst for revenge. They won’t take form, though. Even he knows this. They came for you in the midst of war with their pitchforks and axes and you—they took peace for a granted. It was, for a while. It is again. It is again, and you suppose because of you. More permanent, this time. You see, you always needed humans to start a war.

 

So today it is quiet. He’s gone out to try and find you something to eat. But he’ll be back before long. You know. You _know._ Hot air rises, and so that laughter bubbles up, like gas in a fizzy drink, like water boiled. It's infectious: you stop frowning and start grinning instead, because it's easier, and your lips stretch and teeth show and you throw back your head. It has you in fits, this feeling, gut twisting and wrenching, laughter so strong it can no longer be heard by the human ear. Because it _is_ funny, and you never realised it until now. You're so free, and it's funny. It's hilarious. It's goddamn hilarious.


End file.
